Columnists :: City Streets
The BRA: end it, don’t mend it by Shirley Kressel
contributing writerWednesday May 13, 2009 The Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) is planning its 50th birthday celebration. Boston has endured over a half century of neighborhood destruction, lawless development and financial assaults by this quasi-public agency, an "independent" urban renewal authority that, long after urban renewal has been discredited as a city-building strategy, has extended its fingers into almost every aspect of Boston’s governance.
But because it has such ubiquitous powers, most citizens, the media, and even public officials don’t realize that the BRA is not an integral or necessary part of the city’s government; knowing nothing different, they think it can’t be eliminated. We often hear politicians promise to reform the BRA, to make it more responsive to the community, or more accountable. This is illusory; it is structured as an authority precisely for the purpose of avoiding accountability, and its core mission will always be to promote development. It cannot be transformed. It must be structurally dismantled.
How do we do it? And what should replace it?
The BRA has three general roles: urban renewal, planning/zoning, and community service programs. Each must be terminated and these critical functions must be brought under accountable city control, on the city budget and subject to public oversight.
Urban Renewal:
The BRA was created under a state enabling law (Chapter 121B) by a city council vote in 1957. It was to create and implement 40-year Urban Renewal Plans as approved by the council, to stimulate the city’s depressed post-war economy by replacing "blighted" (read: poor) neighborhoods with middle-class housing (and residents). The BRA also has the power to qualify development projects for city property tax exemption through Chapter 121A, a program created to subsidize affordable housing in blighted areas. Over time, the BRA has elbowed the council out of its oversight roles under both statutes through legislation that exempts Boston from provisions that apply to other cities.
Today, the councilors do not seem to understand how the BRA works, nor do they realize that it was supposed to be fully accountable to them. In its 3,300 acres of urban renewal land, occupying much of the central city area, the BRA controls land use and has eminent domain power; and it can create site-specific urban renewal areas with so-called "demonstration projects," without council approval. It also exacts perpetual transfer taxes from subsequent owners of properties it sells to developers. In 2004, the BRA, negotiating with the council in unlawful secret meetings, herded the councilors into voting to give up most of their remaining powers over the BRA’s urban renewal activities and to perpetuate the urban renewal plans, from which it draws its basic power and legitimacy. But certain reporting requirements were set as a condition of the vote, including annual reports on the BRA’s urban renewal planning and land disposition activities, and from personal interaction with City Councilors I believe the BRA has failed to meet them, denying the council the stipulated tools for accountability.
The council should rescind its 2004 vote and either let the Plans expire over the next few years or vote to terminate them.
City Planning:
The BRA was never meant to be the city’s planning board. Indeed, no other urban renewal authority in the U.S. became its city’s planning agency. It is a conflict of interest, since the authority is a development interest and should be seeking approvals from the planning board and city council. Yet, in 1960, legislation (Chapter 652 of the Acts of 1960) was passed abolishing the Boston planning board and giving all its powers and properties to the BRA; this was to assure that planning would not get in the way of the BRA’s redevelopment agenda, and indeed, it never has. Thus, instead of a disinterested, professional planning and zoning operation accountable to an elected legislative body as provided under our state laws, Boston has a quasi-public redevelopment authority at its helm. Instead of taking, clearing and selling land to private developers as intended, the BRA has amassed a huge land empire of its own, in and beyond urban renewal areas (notably, the seaport industrial area), becoming one of the largest land-owners in Boston. As the planning body, and the staff and legal adviser to the Boston Zoning Commission, the BRA can plan and zone its own land to maximize its lease or sale profits. And it can manipulate the zoning process to enable private developers to escape the zoning laws, protected from legal challenge. Boston mayors have been empowered by this legal shield to effectively re-zone the city site-by-site for developers they favor, who in turn fill their campaign coffers. Since the BRA’s core mission is to promote development projects, particularly large and very profitable development for desirable demographic groups, we have no comprehensive, proactive, long-range city planning. The city council and mayor should file a home rule petition (Boston-specific state legislation) repealing the relevant section of the 1960 law, and reestablish a city planning board, under the oversight of the elected legislative body, the city council. Mass. state laws (Ch. 40A and 41) lay out provisions for planning and zoning agencies in cities.
City service programs:
The BRA has taken over the implementation of many city programs related to jobs, literacy, youth, etc. Some state and federal grants for these services, which should be run by the city directly, run through the BRA. This grip on the purse strings of much-needed public services also adds to the BRA’s political power.
These programs, and their funding, should be put back into the hands of accountable city departments.
When the BRA is dissolved, its billions of dollars’ worth of real estate, (some of which it took, with mayoral permission, from the City of Boston without paying compensation), should be taken into city ownership, and either dedicated as necessary for public use, or surplused by the city council and returned, through competitive bids, into the private market for productive development conforming with genuine city plans and zoning laws. The council should obtain a list and map of BRA-owned property, and get accurate appraisals.
The council should hold extensive public hearings to receive community input on the structure of the planning board, and it should consult legal and planning advisors as necessary to write the by-laws for the planning agency. A new or modified zoning agency may be deemed desirable as well; for this another legislative change may be necessary with regard to the Boston Zoning Enabling Act (Chapter 665 of the Acts of 1956 sets up our Zoning Commission). Boston has been excepted from other state laws affecting planning, zoning and eminent domain; these will require modification as well.
The city charter should be reviewed and revised as necessary to support these changes, and to further improve the checks and balances between the council and the mayor.
The elimination of the BRA and reestablishment of a planning board, funded and operated as a part of publicly accountable city government, is not revolutionary but simply a restoration of normal order. Election season is the time to get it done.
Shirley Kressel is a landscape architect and urban designer, and one of the founders of the Alliance of Boston Neighborhoods. She can be reached at Shirley.Kressel@verizon.net.
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